Michelle Gabel / The Post-Standard(Left to right) Sarah Pulver, 17, of Nedrow; Tom Auffhammer, 17, of Marcellus; and Shelley Matt, 18, of Syracuse, talk while working at Gannon's Isle Tuesday. Pulver uses her cell phone to reach friends, usually without calling them. Auffhammer says he was "the outcast" because he didn't have one until last month.

While Conor Suddaby keeps an alarm clock in the bedroom of his Onondaga home, it has basically become a decoration.

Thursday morning, just before starting his senior year at Christian Brothers Academy, he will be awakened “by a loud annoying sound that plays really, really loud.” That will be courtesy of his BlackBerry, which rests on Conor’s mattress when he goes to sleep at night.

Central New York teenagers are beginning another year of high school. For many of us, September triggers wistful memories. We recall how we’d renew old friendships in school hallways after summer vacation. It’s a nice thought, but that world — the world of pay phones and alarm clocks — is fading fast. Kids today can stay in touch all summer - easily and instantaneously - thanks to the cell phones or mobile devices in their pockets.

Conor, 17, was scooping ice cream Tuesday at Gannon’s Isle on Seneca Turnpike in Syracuse. He keeps track of his shift by pulling out his BlackBerry and checking a website. Eileen Gannon, co-owner of the shop, said it is amazing to see how her young employees build their lives around what many parents once passed off as gadgets.

“At closing time, when they want to unlock their car doors, they use (cell phones) as flashlights,” she said.

Sarah Pulver, 17, another Gannon’s worker, is a senior at Onondaga Central. When she’s not in school, if she wants to reach a friend, she’ll start off by using her phone to send a message through Facebook. If that doesn’t work, she turns to a text message. If worse comes to worst, she’ll actually call. Like Conor, she can remember when she didn’t have a cell phone.

What she can’t imagine is how she’d live without one now.

According to the Pew Research Center, about 75 percent of American teens own a cell phone — a number that is surely climbing as you read this. The center also reports that more than half of American teens send at least 50 text messages a day.

Faced with that electronic tsunami, educators adapt. Conor and Sarah spoke of coaches who use text messages to spread the word about practices or cancellations. Many teachers keep updated lists of assignments on the Internet, which allows students to doublecheck homework or test dates by going to their phones.

The teens at Gannon’s passed on legendary tales about wrathful educators who caught students using cell phones in class. One local high school teacher, it is said, smashed a cell phone with a hammer. Another supposedly went into a student’s contact list and changed the cell phone numbers of all his friends — by one digit.

As with anything, high school kids find ways to rebel. While most teachers ban “social” use of cell phones in the classroom, some kids turn to “no-look” texting while their phones are in their pockets. In the old days, if a teen at school got into trouble with some friends, a mom or dad could send the kid upstairs and then make calls to other adults to learn what really happened. Today, every parent knows that a well-constructed teen alibi can move around Syracuse by cell phone in less time than it takes Olympic champion Usain Bolt to run 100 meters.

Amid all that, there are parents who hold out for as long as they can. Tom Auffhammer, 17 — a Gannon’s employee and a junior at Marcellus Senior High — said his folks allowed him to get his first cell phone just last month. “I was the outcast,” Tom said, in a voice of mock suffering.

Somehow, he survived. As for Conor Suddaby, he listed all the ways he can use his BlackBerry: Want to check the score of a game? Boom. Need to gather more research for school? Done. Asked if there’s any new service he wishes that device could provide, Conor paused. He couldn’t think of anything. Yet even in saying that, he had to laugh.

The one constant in his young life has been change. Who knows what his own kids might bring to their first day of school?